Neo Geo

[Ite]

I remember this being a very expensive system and nobody I know had it, what were the graphix like and why was it so expensive?

[Uzumaki]

It is basically a mini arcade system. It was very expensive back then because of the parts since it did compare to arcade machines of that time era.

 

Today it is still very expensive because not many people bought it back then so not many were made.

[jesusc]

Games range from being SNES quality to being really really high end 2D.

Most of the more popular games are available on newer machines, but even then (aside from some King of Fighters and Metal Slug) only in Japan.

[Bill Brasky]

I think the system was mainly expensive because it had a lot of RAM which was costly back then.

[Platinumfungi]

Check out: http://www.neo-geo.com/ for more info

[+LS650]

Wikipedia also has a detailed, yet concise entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Geo_%28console%29

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

The Neo Geo has an extremely minimal amount of RAM, actually. Less than 128kB I'm sure. Cartridge based systems don't need much RAM because reading data from the cart is just about as fast as reading from internal memory. It's only when your data is on a CD or hard drive or other slow to read media that you need to worry about system RAM.

 

The Neo Geo system itself was expensive simply because the architecture wasn't designed for the average consumer market. It was designed for the arcade market, where $500 is actually relatively cheap.

 

The cartridges were also really expensive which was the double damnation for the Neo Geo. They were expensive because they were so huge. Again, this is standard for the arcade market, where games generally don't use any kind of compression techniques or other programming techniques to cut down size. I think Neo Geo games were probably even bigger than the average arcade game (and therefore more expensive for the consumer) simply because the size of the games became one of SNK's main marketing points for the system.

 

 

...word is bondage...

[Cassidy Nolen]

It is a rocker of a console. Big carts with two rows of game boards in each one. Contrary to popular belief, the home games are not interchangeable directly with the arcade versions. Memory cards and controllers are however.

 

The system came in a few versions, all of which were expensive. My Gold system came packed with one control stick and the memory card while I have seen other gold systems with two sticks and no card. Seemed it was luck of the draw what your local distributor sold.

 

Great system to collect for because so many of the games are still boxed. Many are available in other formats but I will say that a day spent playing Ghost Pilot or Samurai Shodown is NOT wasted

 

 

C

[raindog151]

i'm just confused as to what's in the MVS -> AES converters that makes them so expensive.

[MCHufnagel]

i'm just confused as to what's in the MVS -> AES converters that makes them so expensive.

They are in high demand. They allow you to use cheaper MVS games in an AES system. So people will pay dearly to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars collecting games to play.

[raindog151]

They are in high demand. They allow you to use cheaper MVS games in an AES system. So people will pay dearly to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars collecting games to play.

 

so, it's all just the fact i want one, not the tech in the small box?

[EmOneGarand]

It is basically a mini arcade system. It was very expensive back then because of the parts since it did compare to arcade machines of that time era.

 

Today it is still very expensive because not many people bought it back then so not many were made.

Mini arcade? It IS an arcade system, they released the AES as an home alternative to owning the JAMMA MVS board and cartridges. If you know anything about the innards of the AES carts their the same as their MVS counterparts, mearly altered (more pins) to not fit in a MVS slot (to stop arcade owners from buying the then inexpensive AES carts for their NeoGeo cabinets).

 

I own one, the graphic capabilities of the hardware were amazing having lasted till just last year before Playmore replaced the hardware with the NeoWave board (about 10-12 year run) which follows the same principle as the MVS.

Edited December 8, 2006 by EmOneGarand

[spacecadet]

Games range from being SNES quality to being really really high end 2D.

 

In terms of graphics and sound capability, it is actually significantly more powerful than any other dedicated 2D game machine, ever. The Sega Saturn finally equaled it in most areas but it obviously suffered from some severe load times that the AES didn't (being cart-based). Even the Saturn couldn't quite get most Neo Geo ports right.

 

Not all games used its capabilities to the fullest, so what you say is basically true - some of its games have very simple graphics. But it could do things that no other system of its day could even hope to achieve. It was kind of like if you'd released the NES in 1977 and put it up against the Atari 2600.

 

Most of the more popular games are available on newer machines, but even then (aside from some King of Fighters and Metal Slug) only in Japan.

 

The interesting thing is that most ports on even supposedly more powerful machines don't play quite right. The PS1 version of Metal Slug, for example, has to pause to load in the middle of a level. It also has some pretty severe slowdown (something most versions of Metal Slug suffer from on other consoles).

 

The thing about the Neo Geo is that it offered a huge number of colors, a huge number of sprites and a huge number of 2D effects for developers to work with, along with a basically limitless amount of RAM for things like backgrounds or object textures. But all of that literally cost developers money. Unlike most systems, NG carts can be as big or small as developers want, really, depending on how much they thought it was worth paying for in physical memory chips. Most developers, especially at the beginning of the system's life when RAM was still hugely expensive, didn't use anywhere near what the system itself could access.

 

And even modern consoles have trouble with the bigger games because they were designed with the fast access capabilities of a cart-based system in mind. Optical systems just can't keep up, so backgrounds end up being muted, there are fewer sprites, fewer frames of animation (this was the main trick used in ports for a long time, so all the animations looked jerkier on other systems), more loading, etc. It's less a problem now than it used to be but it's really only recently that you could even start to be able to assume that a given Neo Geo port would look and run like the original.

 

I only have one game for my AES but it is still one of my favorite systems, largely because it basically is an arcade machine in a nice wedge case. And not that they were rare or anything, but they were never very common so it's kinda cool just to own one. They're also very big. Deceptively big. Pretty much the same size as an Atari 5200, although you wouldn't know it unless you put them side by side (which I have done).

[Uzumaki]

IIRC Neo Geo could display 4096 colors at once, something no other game consoles matched for a number of years.

 

The carts I used to have were quite huge. Something like bigger than a portable DVD players. And quite heavy compared to any other carts.

[Ze_ro]

As far as I'm concerned, most of the graphical flair of the system was attributable to the absolutely enormous cartridges. The cartridges were so big that developers just dumped enormous amounts of graphical data on them and streamed it straight onto the screen... this let the machine do some very impressive animation that would have really bogged down the SNES or Genesis.

 

--Zero